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Comments Posted By jdmn17

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Wisconsin, what does it really mean?

There was another company in MN that tried to resurrect the Indian Motorcycle. Some think it was nothing but a scam. They managed to get a ton of money and tax breaks from the state, county, and local city, built a beautiful plant and manufactured some bikes but it crashed hard because the owners were more intent on glory than making bikes. We see that happen far too often.

There are people here in MN and elsewhere who think ethanol may be one of the biggest scams out there yet we continue to pour money into it chasing something that isn’t always clear

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:30 pm

I’m just a sorta smart dude from MN and I think if you jumped in the car with me and drove around I could point out what I think a small business is pretty fast. I don’t know how to implement that, we can’t have the jd definition but I can tell you there are a lot of companies they call small businesses that are definitely big ones. And probably some we think of as big are smallish

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:27 pm

Fi
I would order pizza tonight but they are pulling the pizza delivery guys off the road. Ten inches down, another 5-8 coming overnight. Pancakes for me.

Great article

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:23 pm

David the only time I got infuriated with Canada (aside from that little problem with Quebec – my families home Province) was when a buddy of mine and I went to Banff and Lake Louise for two weeks. The beer drivers had gone on strike so there was no Molson and Labatts.

Instead there was some local Alberta beer as the only recourse. I recall it to this day, sort of like watered down pee. It had a vintage type automobile on the label, otherwise I recall nothing about it save that it introduced me to wine.

I can still remember getting back down to the states and hitting a bar in Jackson Hole WY and sucking down a cold Coors. It may have been the best beer I’ve ever tasted.

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:20 pm

It is funny when I had the same error message, my first thought was an HP thought. “the assholes have cut me off”. Then reason took over and I simply went through the steps to get back on. I may have the same syndrome as you. I wonder if single malt helps?

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 2:08 pm

Boomer. The one depressing thing about what you wrote regarded facts. The MSM has the same or more facts than you or I. At least they have access to the same or greater fact sources. Yet they persist in toeing the line of the wealthy because they themselves are protecting their own interests. When we put the responsibility for educating us on people who have a vested interest in continuing to extract money from us for their already padded bank accounts then I call foul, but my foul call won’t be heard because the MSM reports their version of the news. Catch 22. We can’t change if we are too lazy to look, we can’t change if we aren’t given the information and we can’t change when we accept their stories as fact. Stacked deck for sure, stacked against the people

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 2:05 pm

Buddy

Great story

Isn’t it a shame the MSM doesn’t focus on these success stories? Instead we hear about the mega corps. I would love to see SOMEONE, ANYONE start focusing on how small and medium sized businesses are managing and even thriving by driving decisions for the welfare of the people who work for them. I’m sure that’s socialism or worse in some people’s minds but small businesspeople are always looking for ways to improve their companies. Most of them are entrepreneurs who had and idea and made it work. Now they are ready to grow or could and they lack the imagination to expand while keeping what made them great, their employees a part of it. So they look at the “traditional” models and think they have to start acting like badasses.

Wake up folks, this recovery is in OUR hands, not big business

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 1:56 pm

PW

As a former cheesehead you are all to aware of how large a role “government” plays in the rural economy, ditto MN where the county my cabin is located in has – ready? – 80% of the people there on one of the government entities. The rest are shopkeepers, loggers (who extract their income from logging mostly Federal and State Forests) and service people like plumbers etc who get their money from the government employees or servicing government businesses. These people overwhelmingly voted RED. Did they even have a clue what that might mean to them?

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 1:50 pm

KQ

What part of the protesting crowd in favor of the teachers may have voted for these clowns because they ran on anti-abortion etal; the talking points of the far right. If there’s a teacher in the protest crowd who went TP because he/she wanted to rebel against big gubment then they are getting their just desserts, ditto the people on SS and Medicare who were out banging the TP drums

“what the fuck? you meant I was going to have to suffer? I thought you were going after THOSE people”

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 1:45 pm

KT

I had to restart and come back in again. What a pain. But I’m back now.

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 12:14 pm

here is what I wonder. If the protests continue after the snow is plowed down there, what next? Who else might come into the fray and how will WI deal with it? I look to the assets employed by Egypt

Local police
State police
National Guard
Regular military

Can the government be so certain of the police or troopers when they can see the writing on the wall if the teachers lose collective bargaining?

National Guard? They are part time troops who live next door or in some cases serve as teachers. Can they be counted on to fire rubber bullets and tear gas into their neighbors?

Regular military? If they get called in is the government certain they will turn their tanks on the people?

This should serve as a sort of early warning to the super rich and governments who seek to govern for corporations instead of the people

The rich really have a tenuous hold on power. They are vastly outnumbered and manage to hold on by spending enough money and propaganda to keep us from coming together through time tested wedge issues. At some point does common misery get us to forget the wedge issues and rise up against their tyranny?

I really do wonder where the breaking point lies

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 12:10 pm

Wondering about WI as the snow falls so thick I can hardly see my workshop from the warmth of my den.

What was the initial reason for the protests that toppled the Egyptian government? Are their other underlying issues going on here? Have the progressives finally started finding their voices? Can this expand into a general uprising against the regressive governments popping up around the country? We are anxiously looking at the ME for other signs of instability while here we are learning of other protests in other states. How many more confrontations will start in other states? How will they expand into other issues?

So many questions. Not enough answers, yet. Stay tuned for perhaps this will be the start of the people taking back their government

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 11:58 am

Kes, that is something we rarely think about. When a company moves into an underdeveloped country do they use the threat of taking their jobs elsewhere if the government doesn’t work with them to keep wages and other costs in control? Maybe that’s part of our love affair with despots. We know they will clamp down on worker unrest. God, what a wicked world this is. We are all wildebeests for the lions and hyena’s who run the companies

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 11:50 am

To a CEO the workers are a disposable, replaceable commodity. They simply use them as they want and if you are fortunate you rise withing the organization until you reach your peak. From there it’s all downhill. It amazes me how companies sacrifice older workers, often giving up years of practical experience for younger employees whose salary and benefits costs are less. It’s all bottom line for these guys. They could care less about the humans who are part of their cost structure and in many cases are the components that actually make the company successful.

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 11:47 am

Sabreen. Campaign finance and term limits are two of my biggest gripes about our Congress. Maybe if they actually spent campaign money on what they stood for it might not be so bad but the tone of tv ads these days is so much on the order of:

“Vote for me because they other candidate is…..”

Of course I live near Michele Bachman country and was subjected to her endless ugly campaign ads so I might be jaded.

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 11:36 am

My goodness you live in a thoughtful part of the world 🙂

Wish more people thought like that.

I wonder – small point – why we need one hundred US Senators. Why not one for each state? Has anyone a reasonable explanation for that?

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 11:32 am

Snoskier

I hand build furniture. I have long ago given up trying to be price competitive with Ikea and other retailers of their ilk. Oddly while I can kick Pottery Barn and other places at the price level I custom build each piece and it surprises me how little imagination people have to look at a pile of shit covered gray barn boards and see a table

I would be a great customer for you because I am a huge advocate for buying locally from smaller businesses. I see no need to feed the monster any more of my money than necessary.

If we focused more on local suppliers and thought about “customer service” then we might all be better off. I know there are some would retort that WalMart hires local people, to that I have no answer save that buying locally keeps more money flowing into the “hood”

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 11:30 am

Betty

Similar feelings, finally had to let it go. They post what fits the way they want to arguments to go.

Great quote btw

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 9:45 am

Caru
The military doesn’t need a union. They have the guns and get what they want. Have you heard a serious peep out of Congress about cutting military spending?

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 9:09 am

Unions.

It always surprises me when we once again discover a visceral issue. We talk here at times about politics and religion being major issues the extremes of each party use to drive wedges between us.

Unions, their benefits and abuses, are one of the oldest wedge issues out there. Rarely do we find someone who has no opinion, usually well formed, on what should be a simple matter. As some have pointed out here, without unions we would have had to wait for ownership to see the abuses they heaped on employees in the effort to drive profits, stock price and riches for the upper management. Unions, or at least the wage and benefits they demanded and won were largely responsible for the rise of management at the lower and middle levels to “living wages” and beyond. Unions busted child labor, onerous work loads and dismal working conditions. Without unions companies, whose sole purpose was and remains to maximize profits would have left the disparity between the haves and have nots. And in some respects the forming of unions may have saved this country from anarchy, as seen in the great worker wars of the early part of the twentieth century. Did unions, using the threats of strikes and slowdowns, exceed their power? Certainly. Are there union bosses who were nothing more than thugs and even loosely affiliated with organized crime? Yes. Still, in the end to trust that senior management at the private and public level can be trusted to treat their workers fairly is a leap of faith a lot of people are rightfully afraid of. So unions do need to exist.

Without teachers unions how eagerly would governments increase class sizes in an effort to conserve funds to spend on managements own salaries.

It is clear from the posts below the lines are drawn and I am certain once the smoke clears we will all stand exactly where we are today.

Two things about the conflict in WI bother me.

First, the assault on this union comes against teachers. Perhaps they too are a visceral issue. There are some really awful teachers out there, and some who are beyond description in their work and dedication. Why do people become teachers? I suspect some do it because they can put out a minimal effort and glide through life with a decent wage and nice pension. I wish to ignore them for now. Most people become teachers (I hope) because they are dedicated to learning and teaching. Today’s teachers cannot approach education like the teachers from my days. In MN most teachers have achieved an MA, not an insignificant investment. They also, if they give a damn, spend their “free time”, those lovely idle summer days we imagined as kids, working on continuing education (the world and knowledge continues to evolve – what they were taught in college often no longer applies or has changed dramatically), or working summer jobs like their students to make up the gap between their still below average pay for people with Master’s degrees. Their class sizes have increased, the dedication of parents to participate in the education of their children and their expectations for how well they’ve been taught has decreased. They often spend the hours before and after school, preparing lesson plans, grading papers or in conferences regarding students. Many coach or serve in roles in other extra-curricular activities. In other words, there are probably fewer teachers today who simply walk into school at 7:30 in the morning and follow the kids out in the afternoon, go home and put their feet up. The stress on teachers today is more severe, more often today I think schools are simply dumping grounds where society can lock up kids from roaming on the streets so teachers are faced with large number of kids who don’t want to be there and have no desire to learn.

I don’t envy teachers. I looked into once and walked away.

Second – where are the cuts to the senior management? The fat underbelly of supervisors, managers, analysts, and their administrative staffs. We hear about how teachers are overpaid and underworked yet we hear nothing about budget cuts to the white collar staffs, reductions in legislators or at least their staffs. Why is it always the most visible who get demonized while bureaucrats sit in their often cushy offices pushing paper and making rules, redundant at best. How much would they streamline government by removing some of these layers. Is that on the table? I doubt it.

Complex and visceral to be sure

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 9:06 am

God’s Blog – 2-19-2011

Whenever I see a “dueling” headline why does my mind go back to a record album given to me by some long forgotten g.f called Dueling Banjo’s? One of the worst ever and of course I had to sit with her and listen to both sides. Sigh

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 9:17 am

Does hell have potato’s and are they then by definition pre-baked?

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 9:14 am

The image of Rush doing Isadora made my appetite disappear

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 9:12 am

I simply send my ex an email. I get everything from that I got over there

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 7:38 am

Morning Khirad,

Great quote. I find it ironic how we vilify wolves here in the states while dogs, wild or just packed up kill far more livestock and wild game. Coyotes too are greater killers.

Yet we fear the wolf.

What an odd country

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 7:37 am

jkk

Apparently God likes goats better than the Cubs

Just sayin

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 19, 2011 @ 9:20 pm

jkk

what’s wrong with you people?

Do you really call the ice man and put blocks in your pool when you are having a summer swimming party?

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 19, 2011 @ 9:19 pm

I thought that was a metaphor

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 19, 2011 @ 9:18 pm

Postage due, that always pisses them off a little bit more

You have to talk to your mail carrier, it’s messy and they always give you “the look”

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 19, 2011 @ 9:17 pm

KB, good night to you

» Posted By jdmn17 On February 19, 2011 @ 8:49 pm